An Independence Day Story

This story is excerpted from The Year of Jubilee: Men of God, pp 237-239:

While many thousands of runaway slaves found freedom in the British army under the provisions of Lord Dunmore’s proclamation, many others served the side of the colonists in rebellion, and fought faithfully and bravely in patriot units. The New England states saw a considerable number of African American men volunteer to fight, many of them slaves or former slaves, in presumed exchange for their freedom.

One such man, a Connecticut slaves, enlisted in the Continental Army in 1777 with the consent of his master, who received the enlistment bounty paid by the government. The former slave served with distinction, survived the war and was “discharged with badges of honor,” only to be claimed years later by his former master as a runaway slave, never manumitted. The man sued for his freedom and the court ruled, “As at the time of enlistment, no person but a freeman could by the resolutions of Congress be enlisted into the Continental army, the consent of his master to the enlistment amounted in law to compleat [sic] manumission.”

In Pennsylvania, fugitive slaves who attempted to join Continental forces or patriot militia would have been returned to their owners. However, in rare instances, enslaved persons may have bargained with their owners, offering to enlist in exchange for freedom. Such might have been the case near Carlisle when Lieutenant John Pratt enlisted thirty-year-old Hercules Johnston, “a mulatto,” into the Fourth Pennsylvania Regiment, on 25 February 1782. Listed on the docket at number seventeen, Johnston is described as “5 Feet 8 inches high, born in Paxtang, Lancaster county, short black curled hair, a blemish on his left eye, yellow complexion, by trade a hammerman.”

Could this man, who was enlisting in Carlisle with the story that he was born in Lancaster, be the elusive Hercules, who repeatedly ran away from iron maker William Bird’s Birdsboro Forge two decades previously? Bird’s Hercules was close to the same height, at five feet ten inches, but would have been ten years older; however, recruiters were as bad as slaveholders at estimating the ages of blacks. More intriguing are other similarities—both men were forge workers, both had a blemish on one eye, and Bird’s Hercules spoke fluent German and was believed to be hiding among the Germans in Lancaster County. This places him closer to Paxton Township, the birthplace cited by the enlisting man, Hercules Johnston. We also have no evidence of any slaves or free blacks named Hercules in Paxton Township, other than John Harris’ Hercules, who was long dead by this time. Could this newly enlisted Continental Army soldier be the fugitive iron forge slave Hercules from Berks County? Although we can only speculate, based on certain similarities, it would not be unusual for a fugitive slave to try to hide out in the army.

Although Pennsylvania had significant numbers of free blacks, mostly in Philadelphia, during the war, and large numbers of enslaved blacks who could have served as substitutes for their masters in state regiments, few were actually enlisted in militia units, in comparison with other northern and New England states.

In a 1974 pamphlet produced by the National Archives, historian Debra L. Newman extracted all the identifiable records for African American patriot soldiers. Pennsylvania shows only two listings, both of which are the same name and therefore probably indicate records relating to the same soldier: Cato Johnston, a private listed with both the First and Second Pennsylvania Regiments. It is interesting to note that the only soldier listed for this state bore the same surname, with the same distinctive spelling, as the man who enlisted in the Fourth Regiment in Carlisle. Though there were other African Americans with the surname Johnson listed in other state and Continental regiments, the spelling variant Johnston appears only in Pennsylvania, in these listings. What could the link be, if any, between Cato Johnston of the First/Second Regiment, and Hercules Johnston, of the Fourth Regiment? With so few surviving records, we may never know, but if one of the men was born near present day Harrisburg, the possibility exists that, because of the shared surname, both have central Pennsylvania connections—an unusual, and until now unrealized, distinction for area blacks in this time period.